Social Interaction Lab

at Stanford University

Publications & preprints

Papers

⚲
All 90 Pragmatics & meaning 33 Convention & coordination 28 Minds & machines 25 Social cognition 24 Language development 4 Conversation dynamics 4 Methods & open science 9 Visual & multimodal 8 Social learning & teaching 6
2026
Generalized shared reality arises in brief interactions from structured social inferences about commonality
Mahaphanit, W., Welker, C., Schmidt, H., Houlihan, S. D., Chang, L. J., & Hawkins, R. D.
Social cognition Conversation dynamics
materials
PsyArXiv Preprint
Gesturing toward abstraction: Multimodal convention formation in collaborative physical tasks
Maeda, K., McCarthy, W. P., Tsai, C-Y., Mu, J., Wang, H., Hawkins, R. D., Fan, J. E., & Abtahi, P.
Convention & coordination Conversation dynamics Visual & multimodal
materials
Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Asking the right questions? What people learn about strangers in conversation
Brockbank, E., Dee, N. R., O'Keeffe, M., Mahaphanit, W., Gerstenberg, T., Fan, J. E., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning Social cognition Conversation dynamics
materials
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
When precision pays: Costs, benefits, and constraints in good-enough production
Mankewitz, J., Zettersten, M., Jacobs, C., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
The socio-pragmatic function of linguistic complexity in the domain of law
Brooks, T., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
The content of common ground shapes coordination
Machino, Y., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Selective truths: How speakers mislead and listeners miss it?
Fang, K., Guan, R., Wu, C., Franke, M., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Predicting projection variation
Tonhauser, J., Hawkins, R. D., & Scontras, G.
Pragmatics & meaning
36th Meeting of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT)
Pragmatic explanation of causal inference from correlational statements
Zur, A., Goodwin, E., Shain, C., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Making room for new words
Bergey, C. A., Altenhof, A. M., Burnham, C. V., Lee, O., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Inferring joint commitment from observed coordination
Kuang, J., Brockbank, E., Bicchieri, C., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
From idiosyncratic narratives to social scripts: Mapping the semantic space of self-descriptions in children and adults
Perez, K., Bergey, C. A., Hawkins, R. D., & Gweon, H.
Language development Social cognition
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Cognitive offloading and the speedup illusion in human-AI interaction
Yu, S., Cheng, M., Jabbar, A., Sucholutsky, I., Collins, K. M., Jurafsky, D., & Hawkins, R. D.
Minds & machines
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Balancing competing goals when coordinating over rule construction
Mankewitz, J., Collins, K. M., Tenenbaum, J. T., Griffiths, T., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Act or clarify? Modeling sensitivity to uncertainty and cost in communication
Tsvilodub, P., Mulligan, K., Snider, T., Hawkins, R. D., & Franke, M.
Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
A utility-based account of the choice of constituent question polarity
Lee, S-Y., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
When More Words Say Less: Decoupling Length and Informativity in Image Description Evaluation
Kapur, R., Hawkins, R. D., & Kreiss, E.
Minds & machines Pragmatics & meaning
Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Accommodation and epistemic vigilance: A pragmatic account of why LLMs fail to challenge harmful beliefs
Cheng, M., Hawkins, R. D., & Jurafsky, D.
Pragmatics & meaning Minds & machines
Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
2025
Evaluating distillation methods for data-efficient syntax learning
Yamakoshi, T., Griffiths, T. L., McCoy, R. T., & Hawkins, R. D.
Minds & machines Methods & open science
Findings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)
Comparing human and LLM politeness strategies in free production
Zhao, H., & Hawkins, R. D.
Minds & machines Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)
Ad hoc conventions generalize to new referents
Ji, A., Bergey, C. A., Eliav, R., Artzi, Y., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination
Under review
Lexical search and social reasoning jointly explain communication in associative reference games
Kumar, A., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
materials
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Core Knowledge Deficits in Multi-Modal Language Models
Li, Y., Gao, Q., Zhao, T., Wang, B., Sun, H., Lyu, H., Hawkins, R. D., Vasconcelos, N., et al.
Minds & machines
ICML
Using LLMs to advance the cognitive science of collectives
Sucholutsky, I., Collins, K. M., Jacoby, N., Thompson, B. D., & Hawkins, R. D.
Minds & machines Social cognition
Nature Computational Science
Minding the politeness gap in cross-cultural communication
Machino, Y., Hofer, M., Siegel, M., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning Social cognition
materials
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Integrating neural and symbolic components in a model of pragmatic question-answering
Tsvilodub, P., Hawkins, R. D., & Franke, M.
Minds & machines Pragmatics & meaning
SCiL
Dynamics of topic exploration in conversation
Schmidt, H., Bergey, C. A., Zhou, C., Helion, C., & Hawkins, R. D.
Conversation dynamics
materials
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
How do we get to know someone? Diagnostic questions for inferring personal traits
Brockbank, E., Gerstenberg, T., Fan, J. E., & Hawkins, R. D.
Social cognition Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Function shapes form: Compositionality emerges from communicative needs, not environmental structure alone
Mankewitz, J., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination
materials
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Two paths to variation in semantic judgments: How ambiguity and conceptual diversity drive individual differences in meaning
Liu, D., Marjieh, R., Jacoby, N., & Hawkins, R. D.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Relevant answers to polar questions
Hawkins, R. D., Tsvilodub, P., Bergey, C. A., Goodman, N. D., & Franke, M.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
Experimentology: An open science approach to experimental psychology methods
Frank, M. C., Braginsky, M., Cachia, J., Coles, N., Hardwicke, T. E., Hawkins, R. D., et al.
Methods & open science
MIT Press
Collective inference depends on the communication channel
Zubak, Y., & Hawkins, R. D.
Social cognition
Under review
Testing the roles of passive isolation and active social motivation in lexical variation using experimental microsocieties
Chen, A. M., Saxe, R., & Hawkins, R. D.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
Submitted
Signaling social identity in referential communication
Chen, A. M., Hawkins, R. D., & Saxe, R.
Social cognition Convention & coordination
Under review
2024
When and why does shared reality generalize?
W Mahaphanit, C Welker, H Schmidt, L Chang, RD Hawkins
Social cognition
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Toddlers Actively Sample from Reliable and Unreliable Speakers
J Mankewitz, RD Hawkins, J Saffran
Language development
materials
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
The wisdom of partisan crowds: Comparing collective intelligence in humans and LLM-based agents
YS Chuang, S Suresh, N Harlalka, A Goyal, R Hawkins, S Yang, D Shah, J Hu, T Rogers
Minds & machines Social cognition
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Simulating opinion dynamics with networks of LLM-based agents
Y Chuang, A Goyal, N Harlalka, S Suresh, RD Hawkins, S Yang, D Shah, J Hu, TT Rogers
Minds & machines Social cognition
materials
NAACL.
Shared functional specialization in transformer-based language models and the human brain
TR Sumers*, S Kumar*, T Yamakoshi, KA Norman, U Hasson, TL Griffiths, RD Hawkins, SA Nastase
Minds & machines
materials
Nature Communications
Parents scaffold the formation of conversational pacts with their children
AA Leung, D Yurovsky, RD Hawkins.
Convention & coordination Language development
materials talk
Child Development
Interaction structure constrains the emergence of conventions in group communication
V Boyce, RD Hawkins, ND Goodman, MC Frank.
Convention & coordination
materials
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Group coordination catalyzes individual and cultural intelligence
CM Wu, R Dale, RD Hawkins.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
Open Mind
Distributed statistical inference in social interaction networks
Y Zubak, P Dronavalli, YS Chuang, RD Hawkins.
Social cognition
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
A longitudinal analysis of individual differences in the development of communicative acts
C Bergey, M O'Keeffe, RD Hawkins
Language development
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
A hierarchical Bayesian model of adaptive teaching
AM Chen, A Palacci, N Vélez, RD Hawkins*, SJ Gershman*.
Social cognition Social learning & teaching
Cognitive Science
2023
Visual resemblance and interaction history jointly constrain pictorial meaning
RD Hawkins, M Sano, ND Goodman, J Fan.
Convention & coordination Pragmatics & meaning Visual & multimodal
materials
Nature Communications.
The emergence of specialized roles within groups
RL Goldstone, E Andrade-Lotero, RD Hawkins, ME Roberts.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
Topics in Cognitive Science.
Show or tell? Teaching with language outperforms demonstration but only when context is shared
T Sumers, M Ho, RD Hawkins, TL Griffiths.
Pragmatics & meaning Social cognition Social learning & teaching
materials
Cognition.
Semantic uncertainty guides the extension of conventions to new referents
R Eliav, A Ji, Y Artzi, RD Hawkins.
Convention & coordination Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Reconciling truthfulness and relevance as epistemic and decision-theoretic utility
TR Sumers, MK Ho, TL Griffiths, RD Hawkins.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Psychological Review.
Overinformative question answering by humans and machines
P Tsvilodub, RD Hawkins, ND Goodman, M Franke.
Pragmatics & meaning Minds & machines
materials
Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Flexible social inference facilitates targeted social learning when rewards are not observable
RD Hawkins, A Berdahl, AS Pentland, ND Goodman, JB Tenenbaum, PM Krafft.
Social cognition Social learning & teaching
materials
Nature Human Behavior.
Causal interventions expose implicit situation models for commonsense language understanding
T Yamakoshi, JL McClelland, AE Goldberg, RD Hawkins.
Minds & machines
materials demo
Findings of ACL.
2022
Using natural language and program abstractions to instill human inductive biases in machines
S Kumar, C Correa, I Dasgupta, R Marjieh, M Hu, RD Hawkins, J Cohen, N Daw, KR Narasimhan, TL Griffiths
Minds & machines Social learning & teaching
materials
NeurIPS.
Shades of confusion: Lexical uncertainty modulates ad hoc coordination in an interactive communication task
S Murthy, TL Griffiths, RD Hawkins.
Convention & coordination Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Cognition.
Semantic relatedness retroactively boosts memory and promotes memory interdependence across episodes
J Antony, A Romero, A Vierra, R Luenser, RD Hawkins, K Bennion.
Pragmatics & meaning
eLife.
Probing BERT's priors with serial reproduction chains
T Yamakoshi, TL Griffiths, RD Hawkins.
Minds & machines
materials demo
Findings of ACL.
Mixed-effects transformers for hierarchical adaptation
J White, ND Goodman, RD Hawkins.
Minds & machines
EMNLP.
Identifying concept libraries from language about object structure
C Wong, W McCarthy, G Grand, Y Friedman, J Tenenbaum, J Andreas, RD Hawkins, JE Fan.
Convention & coordination Minds & machines Visual & multimodal
materials
Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
How to talk so your robot will learn: Instructions, descriptions, and pragmatics
TR Sumers, RD Hawkins, MK Ho, TL Griffiths, D Hadfield-Menell.
Minds & machines Pragmatics & meaning Social learning & teaching
materials
NeurIPS.
From partners to populations: A hierarchical Bayesian account of coordination and convention
RD Hawkins, M Franke, MC Frank, AE Goldberg, K Smith, TL Griffiths, ND Goodman.
Convention & coordination
materials talk
Psychological Review.
Abstract visual reasoning with tangram shapes
A Ji, N Kojima, N Rush, A Suhr, WK Vong, RD Hawkins, Y Artzi
Minds & machines Convention & coordination Visual & multimodal
materials dataset
EMNLP.
A pragmatic account of the weak evidence effect
SA Barnett, TL Griffiths, RD Hawkins.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Open Mind.
2021
The division of labor in communication: Speakers help listeners account for asymmetries in visual perspective
RD Hawkins, H Gweon, ND Goodman.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials talk
Cognitive Science.
Respect the code: Speakers expect novel conventions to generalize within but not across social group boundaries
RD Hawkins, I Liu, AE Goldberg, TL Griffiths.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
materials
Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Learning to communicate about shared procedural abstractions
W McCarthy*, RD Hawkins*, C Holdaway, H Wang, J Fan.
Convention & coordination Visual & multimodal
materials talk
Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Learning rewards from linguistic feedback
T Sumers, M Ho, RD Hawkins, K Narasimhan, TL Griffiths.
Minds & machines Social learning & teaching
materials
AAAI.
Generating informative, open-domain clarification questions without question examples
J White, G Poesia, RD Hawkins, D Sadigh, N Goodman.
Minds & machines Pragmatics & meaning
materials
EMNLP.
2020
When redundancy is useful: A Bayesian approach to 'overinformative' referring expressions
J Degen, RD Hawkins, C Graf, E Kreiss, ND Goodman.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Psychological Review.
Pragmatic inference and visual abstraction enable contextual flexibility during visual communication
JE Fan, RD Hawkins, M Wu, ND Goodman.
Pragmatics & meaning Visual & multimodal
materials
Computational Brain & Behavior.
Investigating representations of verb bias in neural language models
RD Hawkins*, T Yamakoshi*, TL Griffiths, AE Goldberg.
Minds & machines
materials talk
EMNLP.
Continual adaptation for efficient machine communication
RD Hawkins, M Kwon, D Sadigh, ND Goodman
Minds & machines Convention & coordination
materials talk
CoNLL.
Characterizing the dynamics of learning in repeated reference games
RD Hawkins, MC Frank, ND Goodman.
Convention & coordination
materials
Cognitive Science.
2019
The emergence of social norms and conventions
RD Hawkins, ND Goodman, RL Goldstone.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
ShapeGlot: Learning language for shape differentiation
P Achlioptas, JE Fan, RD Hawkins, ND Goodman, L Guibas.
Minds & machines Visual & multimodal
materials demo
ICCV.
Coordinating on meaning in communication
RD Hawkins.
Convention & coordination Pragmatics & meaning
PhD Dissertation
Communicating semantic part information in drawings
K Mukherjee, RD Hawkins, JE Fan
Pragmatics & meaning Visual & multimodal
materials
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.'
2018
Improving the replicability of psychological science through pedagogy
RD Hawkins*, EN Smith*, C Au, JM Arias, R Catapano, E Hermann, M Keil, A Lampinen, S Raposo, J Reynolds, S Salehi, J Salloum, J Tan, MC Frank.
Methods & open science
materials
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.
Emerging abstractions: Lexical conventions are shaped by communicative context
RD Hawkins, M Franke, K Smith, ND Goodman.
Convention & coordination
materials dataset
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
2017
Path ensembles and a tradeoff between communication efficiency and resilience in the human connectome
A Avena-Koenigsberger, B Misic, RD Hawkins, A Griffa, P Hagmann, J Goñi, O Sporns.
Social cognition
Brain Structure and Function.
Colors in context: A pragmatic neural model for grounded language understanding
W Monroe, RD Hawkins, ND Goodman, C Potts.
Pragmatics & meaning Minds & machines
materials dataset
Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
2016
The formation of social conventions in real-time environments
RD Hawkins, RL Goldstone.
Convention & coordination Social cognition
materials
PLoS ONE.
Can two dots form a Gestalt? Measuring emergent features with the capacity coefficient
RD Hawkins, JW Houpt, A Eidels, JT Townsend.
Methods & open science
materials
Vision Research.
A tutorial on general recognition theory
NH Silbert, RD Hawkins.
Methods & open science
materials
Journal of Mathematical Psychology.
2015
Why do you ask? Good questions provoke informative answers
RD Hawkins, A Stuhlmüller, J Degen, ND Goodman.
Pragmatics & meaning
materials
Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Features of response times: Identification of cognitive mechanisms through mathematical modeling
D Algom, A Eidels, RD Hawkins, B Jefferson, JT Townsend.
Methods & open science
The Oxford Handbook of Computational and Mathematical Psychology
Conducting real-time multiplayer experiments on the web
RD Hawkins.
Methods & open science
materials
Behavior Research Methods.
Coarse-to-fine sequential Monte Carlo for probabilistic programs
A Stuhlmüller, RD Hawkins, N Siddharth, ND Goodman.
Methods & open science
ArXiv Technical Report
2013
Bootstrap methods for the empirical study of decision-making and information flows in social systems
S DeDeo, RD Hawkins, S Klingenstein, T Hitchcock.
Methods & open science Social cognition
materials
Entropy